Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 1,508 more cases, 14 deaths; 3 mass immunization clinics opening today in Toronto; 9 York Region schools closed because of COVID-19
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Wednesday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
10:38 a.m.: Ontario is also reporting no new deaths in long-term care so the total remains at 3,752 LTC residents who have died since the pandemic began.
The province says there are eight fewer long-term-care homes in outbreak for a total of 72 or 11.5 per cent of all LTC homes.
10:35 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 58,202 additional vaccine doses were administered since its last daily report for a total of 1,301,334 as of 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The province says 290,659 people are fully vaccinated, which means they have had both shots.
10:20 a.m.: Locally, there are 542 new cases in Toronto, 253 in Peel and 107 in York Region.
10:10 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 1,508 more COVID-19 cases, with 14 deaths.
The seven-day average is up to 1,361 cases daily or 65 weekly per 100,000, and down to 12.6 deaths per day.
The labs report 49,128 completed tests. Theu also report a 3.5 per cent positivity rate.
10 a.m.: Two more Catholic elementary schools in York Region have been closed to in-class learning because of COVID-19, bringing the total to seven. (Two public schools are also closed.)
The latest schools to close are:
- St. James Catholic in Vaughan, with one confirmed case and one closed classroom. The school will reopen March 25.
- St. Joseph the Worker elementary in Thornhill has two confirmed cases and three classrooms were also closed. The school will reopen March 25.
The others are:
- Good Shepherd Catholic Elementary School has six cases and three classrooms were also closed. The school will reopen March 24.
- Our Lady Of Good Counsel has three cases and two classrooms were also closed. The school will reopen March 22.
- St. Margaret Mary elementary has one confirmed case and one classroom closed. It will reopen March 22.
- St. Mary elementary has three confirmed cases and four classrooms closed. It will reopen March 22.
- St. Thomas Aquinas elementary has one confirmed case and one classroom closed. It will reopen March 25.
Meanwhile, two York Region public schools are also closed because of COVID. Woodbridge College in Vaughan (30 cases, reopens March 25) and Lorna Jackson Public School (one case, reopens March 24).
York Region moved into the red" zone of the province's reopening framework earlier on Feb. 22, which means restrictions have been eased on some businesses. Peel Region and Toronto both stayed in the grey" lockdown of the framework.
9:15 a.m.: Peel medical officer of health Dr. Lawrence Loh said he doesn't support the province further reopening his region with the rise in COVID-19 cases.
Loh spoke of perhaps introducing a modified grey-zone reopening, and would not recommend indoor dining for the region at this time.
He asked the public not to take out their frustrations over a delayed reopening on front-line staff.
Ontario has kept Toronto and Peel Region in the grey-lockdown zone framework of the reopening process. The province was expected to make an announcement at the end of the week on whether to ease restrictions or keep the regions in lockdown.
8:55 a.m. Public health officials are urging St. Patrick's Day revellers to follow physical distancing and other anti-pandemic guidelines today.
The main concern is that gatherings and celebrations could turn into COVID-19 super-spreader events.
Some provinces and cities have put new restrictions in place; others will rely on existing measures.
The Irish embassy in Ottawa is holding a virtual event instead of a traditional reception.
British Columbia has ordered bars and restaurants to stop serving alcohol at 8 p.m., while pubs in Atlantic Canada will be closed or have limited seating,
Niagara Falls will be lit green for 15 minutes on the hour tonight.
8:15 a.m. With summer looming and tourism-reliant countries anxiously waiting for the return of a steady influx of tourism income amid the coronavirus pandemic, the European Union's executive body presented a proposal Wednesday that would allow European citizens and residents - vaccinated or not - to travel freely across the 27-nation region by the summer.
The plan, which will be discussed next week during a summit of EU leaders, foresees the creation of vaccine certificates aimed at facilitating travel from one member state to the other.
The topic has been discussed for weeks and proved to be divisive. The travel industry and southern European countries dependent on tourism like Greece and Spain have been pushing for the quick introduction of the measure, which could help avoid quarantines and testing requirements.
But several member states, including France, argued that it would be premature and discriminatory to introduce such passes since a large majority of EU citizens haven't had access to vaccines so far.
According to data compiled by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, less than 5% of European citizens have been fully vaccinated amid delays in deliveries and production of vaccines. The European Commission, however, remains confident it can achieve its goal that 70% of the EU adult population is vaccinated by the end of the summer.
To secure the adhesion of all member states, the commission proposed that its so-called Digital Green Certificates, which should be free of charge, would be delivered to EU residents who can prove they have been vaccinated, but also to those who tested negative for the virus or have proof they recovered from it.
8:10 a.m. Syria's first couple are on their way to recovery nine days after testing positive for the coronavirus, President Bashar Assad's office said Wednesday.
Assad, 55, and his wife have had mild symptoms of the illness and are continuing their work as usual from home. They plan return to normal life once they test negative for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, the presidency said.
Syria has registered 16,656 cases of coronavirus, including 1,110 deaths in government-held areas. The numbers are believed to be much higher because of limited testing being done, particularly in areas of northern Syria outside government control.
Examinations of the first couple show their health is gradually returning to normal," the presidency statement said. They are in a stage of recovery."
Assad's wife, Asma, who is 10 years younger, announced her recovery from breast cancer in 2019.
The pandemic, which has severely tested even developed countries, has been a major challenge for Syria's health care sector, already depleted by years of conflict.
8 a.m. COVID-19 experts say Toronto is being hit by a third wave of the virus - or a resurgence of the second wave - and officials will put residents at risk if they relax anti-virus restrictions now.
There's no question we're in the third wave and it's a pipe dream to believe that anything other than additional measures are going to cause this to abate," said Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious-diseases specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Our vaccination efforts are not going to simmer this down."
Toronto's public health chief, Dr. Eileen de Villa, said Monday she will this week advise her provincial counterpart on any changes Premier Doug Ford's government should make to Toronto's current grey zone" restrictions.
Morris, one of four experts consulted Tuesday by the Star, saw indicators a couple of weeks ago suggesting a third surge in COVID-19 infections. (The first wave ran from spring to summer 2020, with another rise from autumn to mid-January.)
Read the full story from the Star's David Rider
7:52 a.m. Sending mobile clinics to naturally occurring retirement communities in Toronto's COVID-19 hot spots will speed up the vaccination rollout to older adults at highest risk of severe illness and death, according to a new brief by the COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.
The strategy, which targets tens of thousands of older adults living in apartments, condos, co-ops and social housing buildings, will quickly get vaccines to this vulnerable population, preventing hospitalizations and saving lives.
The report, released Wednesday, prioritizes naturally occurring retirement communities (known as NORCs) for on-site mobile vaccination clinics, a plan the authors say will ensure vaccines are distributed efficiently and equitably.
Read the full story from the Star's Jennifer Yang and Megan Ogilvie
7:15 a.m. A sore back, a sore body, a couple of days with a high fever.
Fred VanVleet had COVID-19 and it was a short-term nightmare.
I could feel the sickness, I could just feel it in me," the veteran Raptors guard said Tuesday night. I could feel it in my bones, in my muscles, in my blood. It just was something that was taking over my body for a short period of time."
VanVleet knows he was one of the luckier ones. He got through those debilitating days, those 48 hours where it hurt just to be awake, where everything was just off." He's looking forward to be able to resume his career as early as Wednesday night.
He knows that it's not been that way for hundreds of thousands of others worldwide.
Read the full story from the Star's Doug Smith
6:36 a.m.: The World Health Organization reported there was a 10-per-cent rise in new coronavirus cases globally last week, driven by surges in the Americas and Europe.
WHO said in its weekly update on the status of the global outbreak published on Wednesday,the worldwide number of new COVID-19 cases peaked in early January at nearly 5 million cases, but then dropped to about 2.5 million cases per week in mid-February.
The UN health agency noted that last week was the third consecutive week there was a global rise in new cases, after weeks of declining infections. WHO said COVID-19 numbers in the Americas and Europe accounted for more than 80% of all new cases and deaths in the last week.
In Europe, WHO said new confirmed cases rose by about 6% while deaths have been consistently declining." It said the highest numbers were recorded in France, Italy and Poland.
The spike in cases comes as more than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, have temporarily suspended their use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine amid reports that it is linked to blood clots. WHO and the European Medicines Agency have said there is no evidence to date the vaccine is linked to the blood clots and that its benefits continue to outweigh the risks of side effects.
6:31 a.m.: Despite growing optimism, Ontario remains in a tricky spot as it marks Wednesday's anniversary of Premier Doug Ford's first pandemic state of emergency declaration.
Ontario has confirmed an average of 1,334 new cases a day in the last seven days, up 16 per cent from a week ago - and triple the rate of growth from the previous week - as public health restrictions are relaxed and the percentage of new variant cases rises even as the spread of earlier strains declines.
6:31 a.m.: One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's minority government has quarterbacked an unprecedented campaign against the threat of the virus and the economic damage it has inflicted. Ottawa has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to save businesses and provide people with enough money to eat and pay the bills. It co-ordinated a massive drive to buy almost 3 billion items of personal protective equipment and medical gear and is now trying to supply the entire country with vaccines amid a global race for shots that didn't exist mere months ago.
But for all the hard work that Anand and others inside the government describe, critics question whether the federal response has been enough.
Read the full story from the Star's Alex Ballingall here.
6:30 a.m.: New daily cases of COVID-19 in the Greater Toronto Area could more than triple by early April, according to modelling by the University of Waterloo and University of Guelph, surpassing peaks reached in the previous two waves of the pandemic.
The regions - Toronto, Peel, Durham, York and Halton - could see nearly 3,800 cases a day by then, up from the 1,000 or so reported in the region on Sunday.
You have a variant (B.1.1.7) that's 50 per cent more transmissible and you're using the same tool box and control efforts that barely worked against the previous variant," said Chris Bauch, a professor and a university research chair in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. So of course the prevalence will increase. It might be a bit more or a bit less but if you're reopening and you have a more transmissible variant, cases will increase. It's not even really rocket science."
Read the full story from the Star's Patty Winsa here.
6:30 a.m.: As the Ontario Premier declared the pandemic an emergency in March 2020, the worst of it was still happening overseas, wreaking havoc in places like northern Italy, where hospitals were overwhelmed and thousands were dying.
In the 365 days that followed, the pandemic has reached every corner of this province in waves. And, on each one of those days, the Star has been there to track and analyze the situation, compiling a day-by-day record of the virus's local impact.
Read the full story from the Star's Ed Tubb here.
6:28 a.m.: Hungary announced a record number of COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday as a powerful surge of the pandemic put an unprecedented strain on the country's health care.
Health officials announced 195 deaths in the last 24 hours, breaking the previous peak of 193 in early December. The number of patients being treated for the disease rose to nearly 10,300, also a record, and nearly three times the number of those hospitalized in early February when the latest surge began.
Hungary has the seventh highest COVID-19 deaths per 1 million inhabitants in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Officials have sought to mitigate the surge with new restrictions and a vaccination program that has made Hungary one of the most-vaccinated countries in Europe.
A new shipment of 100,000 doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine, which among European Union countries is only being used in Hungary, is expected to arrive on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page.
With more than 50,000 jabs on Tuesday, nearly 1.4 million people have received at least one shot, the second-highest rate in the EU.
6:26 a.m.: The Philippine government has decided to temporarily ban the entry of foreigners and limit the entry of returning Filipinos at Manila's international airport to 1,500 daily as it struggles to contain an alarming surge in coronavirus infections.
A government body dealing with the pandemic said the month-long travel restrictions would start Saturday and aim to prevent the spread into the country of coronavirus strains from other countries which are believed to be more contagious. Among those to be allowed limited entry are homebound Filipino workers.
Philippine Airlines said it would announce some flight cancellations to comply with the temporary restriction.
Manila and other cities in the capital region reimposed 7-hour night curfews for two weeks starting Monday and locked down dozens of villages amid the surge in infections which some officials attributed to public complacency and critics blamed on the failure of the government's response to the pandemic.
The Philippines has reported more than 631,300 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 12,848 deaths, the second-highest totals in Southeast Asia after Indonesia.
6:25 a.m.: Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza says European countries, including his, are hoping that the European Medicines Agencies on Thursday will deliver the clarifications and reassurances necessary" to be able to resume administering the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Italy was one of several nations that in recent days halted the AstraZeneca jabs over reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients, though the company and international regulators say there is no evidence the shot is to blame.
Speranza told a parliamentary Social Affairs Commission on Wednesday that it is Italy's hope to have by tomorrow answers from EMA that will enable the relaunching without hesitation of the vaccine campaign" using AstraZeneca doses.
He said the Italian government has utmost trust in EMA" as well as in Italy's medicine agency, adding, we insist on the utmost safety and we are paying the utmost attention to what has happened."
So far, just under 10% of Italy's population have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Speranza told lawmakers that some 50 million doses of vaccines, including for the first time in Italy the Johnson & Johnson one-dose injection, were expected to arrive through June, while some 80 million doses are due to arrive between July and September.
6:23 a.m.: Growing COVID-19 case numbers from variants of concern in British Columbia could dash the province's hopes for indoor religious services or any other return to normal life in the near future, experts say.
Sally Otto, a University of British Columbia professor who has done COVID-19 modelling, said cases of the variant first detected in the United Kingdom have doubled nearly every week since the beginning of February.
Just looking at the past four weeks, she pointed out there were 81 cases of the variant on Feb. 22, 137 on March 1, 363 on March 8, and 818 on Monday. The number of cases grew to 921 on Tuesday.
What we're doing is not enough to stop the spread of the new variant - nowhere close, it's doubling so fast," Otto said. It's just a couple more weeks of doubling before we see a spike in cases in the province.
I don't know what they'll have to do in order to bend that curve down, but I predict more indoor restrictions."
6:21 a.m.: Crystal Bell of the Matawa Health Co-operative recalls seeing elders relax and chat with each other after receiving their first COVID-19 vaccines earlier this month.
It was almost like their little social gathering," the director of clinical and nursing services at MHC said in an interview. They were really thankful."
Bell and her team of about 20 people have run a handful of vaccinations clinics for members of nine Matawa First Nations who live in Thunder Bay, Ont., where a recent surge in COVID-19 cases has plunged the city back into lockdown.
The first clinic opened in March after the organization raised concerns with the local public health unit that many of the new cases were Matawa members.
Bell said interest has been strong, with almost 500 people vaccinated by Monday, though there's still a long way to go.
Read the full story from The Canadian Press here.
6:21 a.m.: The national statistics agency will say this morning how the country's headline inflation barometer fared in February as it continues to face effects from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Statistics Canada's consumer price index rose one per cent in January compared to the same month one year earlier, accelerating from the 0.7 per cent recorded in December 2020.
Expectations are that the index will rise faster in February, although beneath the Bank of Canada's two-per-cent inflation target.
Financial data firm Refinitiv says the average economist estimate is for a year-over-year increase of 1.3 per cent.
The longer price weaknesses prevail, the longer central bank plans to keep its key interest rate at 0.25 per cent to help the economy get back on its feet.
6:20 a.m.: Moderna says upcoming clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine will include Canadian children.
The company announced details of its Phase 2/3 study of COVID-19 earlier this week. It's expected to involve 6,750 healthy pediatric participants aged six months to 12 years.
Moderna says initial participants are based in the United States but that Canadian sites will be added as the trial progresses.
The biotech company says it hasn't yet chosen the Canadian sites, nor Canadian participants.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel says it's an important age group to study.
The trial will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of two doses given 28 days apart. Participants will be followed for one year after the second vaccination.
6:20 a.m.: Three city-operated mass immunization clinics will open in Toronto this morning.
The Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the Scarborough Town Centre and the Toronto Congress Centre will open their doors today for COVID-19 vaccinations.
All three sites will operate from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
They are currently serving people over the age of 80 who have registered for appointments.
Mayor John Tory announced on Monday that three more city-run clinics would be open by the start of April.
The Malvern Community Recreation Centre and the Mitchell Field Community Centre are scheduled to open on March 29, and the Hangar Sports and Events Centre will follow suit on April 5.
6:15 a.m.: Public health officials are urging St. Patrick's Day revellers to follow physical distancing and other anti-pandemic guidelines today.
The main concern is that gatherings and celebrations could turn into COVID-19 super-spreader events.
Some provinces and cities have put new restrictions in place; others will rely on existing measures.
The Irish embassy in Ottawa is holding a virtual event instead of a traditional reception.
British Columbia has ordered bars and restaurants to stop serving alcohol at 8 p.m., while pubs in Atlantic Canada will be closed or have limited seating,
Niagara Falls will be lit green for 15 minutes on the hour tonight.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 17, 2021.
There are 915,868 confirmed cases in Canada (31,517 active, 861,832 resolved, 22,519 deaths. The total case count includes 13 confirmed cases among repatriated travellers.
There were 2,822 new cases Tuesday. The rate of active cases is 82.93 per 100,000 people. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 22,356 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 3,194.
There were 24 new reported deaths Tuesday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 215 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 31. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.08 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 59.25 per 100,000 people.
There have been 26,068,659 tests completed.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Canada as of 4 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 17, 2021.
In Canada, the provinces are reporting 120,004 new vaccinations administered for a total of 3,271,309 doses given. Nationwide, 604,921 people or 1.6 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 8,631.587 per 100,000.
There were 211,690 new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories for a total of 4,193,910 doses delivered so far. The provinces and territories have used 78 per cent of their available vaccine supply.